As a Connecticut Yankee born and bred -- or perhaps I should say born and white-bread, which is how most people think of Connecticut Yankees -- I have always loved history, not just because I am old enough to be historical myself, but because I could never do algebra.

Passing the 13th Amendment helped to reconcile inconsistencies that were forged into our founding documents about: who we are as a nation, who we are as a people and how we wished to define ourselves as individuals.

What is it that leads some men to conclude that women are chattel, obligated to obey them? It's an important question. If we can answer it, with some reasonable degree of science, we just might find a path toward the eventual elimination of this insidious yet pervasive form of violence.

The adoption of the third U.S.-sponsored resolution by the United Nations Human Rights Council on Sri Lanka will now result in an international investigation being carried out in to the conduct of the civil war in the country.

Four years have passed since Sri Lanka's brutal and bloody civil war came to an aggressive end. At the time many rejoiced with the news. It now appears as though reconciliation is playing second fiddle to the growing political intrigue on all sides.

Lincoln, Steven Spielberg's Oscar-nominated movie about the great president's struggle to get Congressional approval for the 13th Amendment outlawing slavery, gets 53-year-old Ohio History teacher Paul LaRue's approval for bringing American history alive.

The proclamation did more than make slavery illegal in the rebellion states; it changed the course of the war and forever transformed the nation. For the first time, it made ubiquitous the Jeffersonian notion of all being created equal.

In coming months and years, teachers' jobs will be made harder by Steven Spielberg's film Lincoln, in which Daniel Day-Lewis gives a brilliant performance as, well, Lincoln-the-abolitionist. The only problem is that Lincoln was not an abolitionist.

Steven Spielberg's Lincoln opens in wide release today, after a limited release last Friday -- and with luck, Barack Obama will not only see it but take it as a template for the current lame-duck session of Congress and for his impending second term.

Think treating trees as entities with rights is farfetched? Is it more of a stretch than designating corporations and ships as persons for legal purposes? Scientific evidence indicates that trees can communicate with each other. No, they cannot argue about politics.